[Charles Bouldin]

Originally Posted by chris v

Activity Monitor, especially if it's set to update every second, is expensive. It'll easily hog 10-20% of CPU. I wouldn't run it, except if you're troubleshooting a specific issue.

a 7200 RPM drive will definitely help, as well. It should improve read/write times by 15-20%.

I put a 7200 rpm drive on Ghz Tibook and it does help.

On Activity Monitor: Edit the com.apple.activitymonitor.plist file to change the updating time to 10 seconds. This keeps AM cpu usage to 1-2% and you can run it all the time. A ten second update is still plenty to alert you when a problem occurs.

[osxrules]

I have activity monitor set to update every 2 seconds and it only uses 1-2% processor.

I hope you people aren't using Activity Monitor to see how much CPU it is using. You need to use the top command in the terminal to check it. If you bring Activity Monitor to the front, it uses 10-15% because it needs more CPU to update the list of processes.

It lets you use 5 seconds for updating anyway so no need to edit preferences manually.

[chris v]

The original poster was saying his machine felt sluggish, and I was suggesting that quitting Activity Monitor might help with that. He didn't say how frequently he had it updating, but I believe the default is every second, which will put the hurt on anything less that 1 ghz or so.

I still don't get the point of having it running constantly. I encounter problems so rarely that I find myself only needing to really look at something in top maybe once every week or two. Although yes, set at -s10 it won't use too much CPU.

I keep the folder 'private/var/vm' in my sidebar so I can keep an eye on swapfiles though, and will reboot if those hit several gig.

[Gorloth]

Try running the Hardware test disc that came with your computer, this might pinpoint some memory problems or other issues.

[altimac]

It seems that what you find slow on your mac compared to your PC is web browsing. Browsing the web makes your mac download a lot of data, and the faster you download datas, the better is your browsing experience. In particular lags...

it's is quite simply explained on my site (www.carrafix.com) and p2p software tend to eat a lot of bandwidth and add long delays to web page downloading.

You should try without any upload or download from any p2p software.
You'll see far less delay...

[G. I.]

Originally Posted by threestain

menu meters - does it suck up cpu when placed in the menubar (dislpaying network and cpu info) like the activity monitor does?

Not at all even on a 400MHz G3.

[HiDDeN]

I have to agree with osxrules. My old iMac DV 400 with OS9 has a much nicer and faster feel to it, while my Powermac G4 D1,42 2G RAM with Tiger isn't always that responsive.

[JeffHarris]

I noticed that if I have a bunch of Dashboard widgets running, my system will slow down a bit. I figured it was them refreshing in the background or something.

I took to disabling Dashboard completely, since once the fun aspect and eye candy got old, I rarely used it.

Download ‘Disable & Enable Dashboard’ Utility. They're a couple of AppleScript applications that shut off /on Dashboard.

http://www.natal.be/index.php/?p=6

[JeffHarris]

Try running Cocktail or Onyx to delete system cache files. Each are highly customizable, so you can keep things like browser cookies and site icons. You can also enable some hidden interface features as well.

Also, there's a great little utility called Transparent Dock which, oddly enough, makes the background of your Dock transparent. It makes a backup of your virgin Dock application and tweaks a copy, that's it! I found that it makes using the Dock feel a bit quicker. It's also MUCH cooler seeing Dock items floating above the Desktop!

http://www.freerangemac.com/

[JeffHarris]

Try running Cocktail or Onyx to delete system cache files. Each are highly customizable, so you can keep things like browser cookies and site icons. You can also enable some hidden interface features as well.

Also, there's a great little utility called Transparent Dock which, oddly enough, makes the background of your Dock transparent. It makes a backup of your virgin Dock application and tweaks a copy, that's it! I found that it makes using the Dock feel a bit quicker. It's also MUCH cooler seeing Dock items floating above the Desktop!

http://www.freerangemac.com/

[daleg]

Not sure I get all this. Yes, Macs are a bit slower than some PCs in dealing with some Web pages because of some software execution, but it's hardly a common occurance unless you're constantly parked on a site that is built exclusively for one browser, say Windows Explorer, or with something like Flash. Good designers are generally smart enough to avoid that, for many reasons.

As for maximizing your own system, remove any haxies or other stuff you've added or don't really need and, as noted, run Cocktail or a similar application for occasional repair of permissions, cache cleaning, etc. I also like Applejack, which lets you do this in single user mode, but I suspect that just pushes my button rather than offering a real performance boost (it would be handy if one had a major meltdown, which I've never had on any of six machines running OSX). You can also use DiskWarrior to occasionally rebuild your directory. I SEEM to notice some app problems when that's overdue.

For a little more money, you can install (probably in this order) more RAM and a faster hard drive. I have been surprised at how much better OSX "felt" as I moved from 512 to 1 gig and now 2 gig of RAM on my main machine (G5 2.0). I think X is a superior OS, but it is a RAM eater and you can't have too much. Even my powerbook, which is for "lighter" work, has 768 megs and if I wasn't lazy and cheap I'd put more in there.

[iPond317]

My experience with Mac OS X on my system (TiBook G4 400, 10GB, 512MB, AirPort) has been generally a happy one. However, as time goes by and with new system updates, the performance has dropped quite a bit - which is sadly to be expected. I always have Adium, iTunes, Mail, Safari, TextEdit, Terminal and sometimes iPhoto open on a daily basis. I've found that everything runs pretty smooth until playing anything in iTunes. But I get a lot of lag since I use the Sound Enhancer and EQ, as well as OSS Enhancer for iTunes. In Safari, Flash and Shockwave animations are horribly slow - actually they are slow in all browsers that I have used. I'm hoping that upgrading to Tiger will serve as a temporary remedy.

[analogika]

a) yes, tiger will help.
b) what OSS Enhancer for iTunes? Have you checked Activity Monitor to see what eats up cycles when you hit play?

'cuz a badly done plug-in could well kill performance.

[Gunner1954]

Originally Posted by HWA AFI

I've been running a mac for 11 months now and I hardly know anything about the OS aside from basic commands and useage. In win XP/2k theres a lot of things you can tweak to speed it up and squeeze that extra little bit of performance out of applications. Are there any performance enhancing tweaks for OS X? I'm running 10.3.9 right now and I haven't been able to find much as far as tweaking OS X to speed it up

In the past few months I have been aiding clients who have been experiencing major slowdowns of their systems (OS X 10.2 thru 10.4.3) and in almost every case, upon running TechTool Pro volume structure diagnostics, the directory had an Extents Overlap, or some other directory structure overlap, including bad partition map. Without going into the cause and why this happens, just know that it is causes the machine to slooowwww waaaay dooowwwwn because it cannot properly read the directory structure to locate data on the drive.

The cure: Backup (do NOT clone) whatever you can. For my clients I only back up the user data and and any applications installers they haven't yet put onto CD. Next, I perform an Initialization of the hard drive or repartition, as necessary, using Disk Utility from the Restore or Installer CD/DVD. Now perform an 'Erase and Install' (yes, again) of the OS from good Install/Restore CDs/DVD, update the OS using the most current Combo Updater, install all Java and other updaters, then do a fresh install of all other applications and their updaters. After installs are complete, perform a Repair Disk Permissions by using the Disk Utility on the current startup drive.

Now you should have a clean partition map, a clean directory structure, clean apps and preferences, and up to date permissions. Your caches should be empty (except the startup cache).

To keep my iBook laptop running efficiently (both my iBook G3 700 and an iBook G4 1.44GHz) I run Repair Permission at the start of each month (whether I think I need to or not!) and I restart my machine once a week to have the system clean out the caches. Some of this cache cleaning is done in the wee hours of the morning, but is not performed if the iBook cover is closed or if it is turned off, thus cache cleaning and other minor maintenance runs on a restart, which then rebuilds the startup cache, allowing the machine to startup more quickly.

Also, I NEVER allow Safari or any other web browser to remain open when I'm not using it. Safari starts up fast enough that I don't mind the short delay and because I can launch a whole folder of sites at one time (Command-Click a folder of sites in the Bookmark Bar) I can get to those updated sites VERY quickly.

Good luck.

Robert 'Gunner' Peltier
IntelimaQ
Consulting Services
Auburn, CA

[nf_able]

as to browser speed, I flirted with Mozilla's MAC-exclusive 'Camino' which was swell but did not support all the sites I visited... then I went to Opera and am not looking back; easy to tab in new pages, saves you place on each page, saves tabs when you X-out the program, and is the speediest I've found.

for speedier start up on apps (which I have to do) is go into my fontbook and disable fonts I don't use (I have 3,000+).

overall speed enhance would be editing some of the 'wow' factors of OS X, like limiting dock effects and replacing the genie window effect with the less RAM chewing options which 'Cocktail' is swell for.

and -if you happen to have 2 HDs... or I guess you could partition, but I don't dance liike that- make one HD where your APPs are installed and designate the other as your swap disk (for PS and the like, I've found this very handy)

-for what its worth

[Telusman]

I have been a mac user since 1998 I also am a Windows specialist, MCSE etc. I use windows by day for my job and can never wait to go home to my Mac as it's the machine i use when i don't want to have to troubleshoot or tinker with to get it to do what i want.

I use a PIV 2.2Ghz / 1gb ram machine at work and at home I have a new 2.0Ghz / 1gb ram iMac G5. The Windows machine can definately surf faster than the mac, pages do load quicker and browsing is a bit speedier, but the difference isn't that big and i don't find it that much of a bother, i'm not heartbroken by having to wait an extra second or two to load a page.

To the guy who said the Windows interface is like Mac Os 9 responsive, you have no idea how right you are, it is Mac OS 9 responsive, so much so that if an application is busy or hung up, you can't move the window, and when u move another window over it the one underneath won't redraw itself leaving an application that just sits there with a blank white window with a title bar that gives you no feedback and u can't do anything with until it either finishes what it's doing or crashes.

Windows UI sucks in a lot of ways, sure the system multitasks but the UI doesn't allow you to multitask in an effective manner. The Mac OS X UI is a much more elegant way to multitask, you still have total control over the windows even if the application is hung up or busy it will still let you minimize it or push it out of the way so you can get on with other work. Windows may be faster for browsing but overall the Windows UI is inferior and if you're doing a lot of things at once (I often have 15 or so windows open at once for doing my job), it can be incredibly counter-productive. My windows machine cries in the face of extreme load, OS X handles it in such a way where i don't even realize the load is all that high. I dunno, I think Mac users got the better deal.

[leperkuhn]

I've found that os x is consistently slower with response time to mouse clicks. However, I use the OSs differently. On windows, I quit apps all the time, because the taskbar doesn't allow me to effectively multitask. so, on my mac I might have 20 or 30 apps open, and things feel slower.

But then again.. even with only a few apps open, things do tend to "feel slower". sometimes typing lags, or a menu doesn't instantly drop down. On my XP box at work, hitting the start menu has an *instant* result, whereas on my ibook or my tower things take a half second to respond. is the XP sytem any faster or more productive? hell no. I hate my work machine. but it does have instant response time. So if os x could incorperate that, I'd be pretty happy.

[Love Calm Quiet]

What has been folks' experience with Speed Freak? It would seem like the thing to consider when there're a bunch of apps open because it's supposed to give a better advantage to the front-most app. I've never been sure what settings to use there, but it never seemed to make that much difference (1.5Mhz PB).

[nhr]

Originally Posted by HWA AFI

In win XP/2k theres a lot of things you can tweak to speed it up and squeeze that extra little bit of performance out of applications. ....

There are real and effective tweaks for XP but it's for the experts not to render the OS unstable; many are more "visual" than "real."
Accept that OS X is slower than Windows for various reasons, here are two:
NT turned out to be too slow when it was developed and to speed it up "the doors" were opened, enabling external calls to the gut of the OS. As time went on, Microsoft expanded on this "functionality" and today pays the price for having an OS that cannot be made secure no matter what; the denial in the Wintel world. The Berkeley Unix kernel, listed as the most secured kernel, has the doors closed, and OS X extended on this.
Some sloppy programing, Java for example, may be of no concern on Windows but detrimental on the Mac being a more sophisticated OS, say more need for error trapping.

Can't speed up lousy programing and I take the security anytime over a marginal speed increase.

[osxrules]

Originally Posted by Telusman

To the guy who said the Windows interface is like Mac Os 9 responsive, you have no idea how right you are, it is Mac OS 9 responsive, so much so that if an application is busy or hung up, you can't move the window, and when u move another window over it the one underneath won't redraw itself leaving an application that just sits there with a blank white window with a title bar that gives you no feedback and u can't do anything with until it either finishes what it's doing or crashes.

Windows UI sucks in a lot of ways, sure the system multitasks but the UI doesn't allow you to multitask in an effective manner. The Mac OS X UI is a much more elegant way to multitask, you still have total control over the windows even if the application is hung up or busy it will still let you minimize it or push it out of the way so you can get on with other work. Windows may be faster for browsing but overall the Windows UI is inferior and if you're doing a lot of things at once (I often have 15 or so windows open at once for doing my job), it can be incredibly counter-productive. My windows machine cries in the face of extreme load, OS X handles it in such a way where i don't even realize the load is all that high. I dunno, I think Mac users got the better deal.

Yes, I agree with you there. I've also noticed Windows GUIs getting stuck. I've also noticed a similar thing on Linux where if I dragged a window when the system was under load, it would leave huge trails. OS X has never done that.

Originally Posted by leperkuhn

I've found that os x is consistently slower with response time to mouse clicks. However, I use the OSs differently. On windows, I quit apps all the time, because the taskbar doesn't allow me to effectively multitask. so, on my mac I might have 20 or 30 apps open, and things feel slower.

But then again.. even with only a few apps open, things do tend to "feel slower". sometimes typing lags, or a menu doesn't instantly drop down. On my XP box at work, hitting the start menu has an *instant* result, whereas on my ibook or my tower things take a half second to respond. is the XP sytem any faster or more productive? hell no. I hate my work machine. but it does have instant response time. So if os x could incorperate that, I'd be pretty happy.

Yes, that's really all it needs. Just some response time improvements. I don't know if it is to do with anti-aliasing but it could well be. Try opening a terminal window and type something like

man hdiutil

which opens the description for that tool. Then use space bar to scroll it. Now turn on/off anti-aliasing in the preferences under display. There is a huge difference in response. Thankfully, I can turn it off in terminal but in other places it's not so easy. Now, I like anti-aliasing but if you use a font like Monaco then fonts look nice and smooth anyway. I never change my system font anyway so why not use something like Monaco and keep anti-aliasing off but just allow it as an option in each individual application? I just want a choice in the matter.

I've tried tools to change anti-aliasing but they usually screw something else up like the login window.

I would like Safari to be able to turn flash and gifs on and off at the flip of a switch too like the block pop-ups menu item.

I would also like Apple to speed up Java. People generally consider Apple's Java implementation to be pretty slow. Check the GUI response of Azureus for an example. Some people report that 10.4.3 improved Java performance a lot in some areas and I actually find that the Azreus GUI doesn't slow down nearly as much.

Flash is slower too - possibly not Apple's fault though:
http://www.creativemac.com/2003/06_j.../flash_osx.htm

I hoped that auto-vectorization in the newer dev tools would have helped but I compiled a huge piece of software and it found maybe 5 loops that it could actually optimize.

All the above things together just add up to make the system as a whole feel sluggish. I guess through time it will get better but in the mean time, Apple should show more consideration for people with slower machines.

I honestly think it has something to do with them being a hardware company. With Microsoft being a software company, they try to make their OS as fast as possible on all levels of hardware as they are making money on the system alone. Apple have to make money from selling hardware so having an OS that requires better hardware is obviously better for them. Yet another reason why Apple should become a software-only company.

[motionMan]

Is it really any wonder that windows (with weak gui effects anyway) would be faster on a P4 than OS X on a mac mini (which is really ~2 year old hardware)? Or that heavy multi-tasking--8+ apps running (especially bittorrent!)--that a single processor G5 would slow down to a few seconds delay? (I know the newer G5s should be faster than they are at "regular" stuff, G5 is faster at heavy stuff, intel is faster at integer, whatever, blah blah)

Back on topic, a few posts back Gunner1954 mentioned partition and directory structure problems slowing machines down... If you hold down the shift key as you startup your machine it is supposed to rebuild the directory structure, at least thats what some final cut pros I've talked to do. I've tried it and it seemed to make a slight difference by itself (more dramitic when combined with some other tweaks already mentions, onyx, caches, etc..), and I do it once a week now if I've been using my machine heavily (and I remember). Hope this helps.

Edit: Just did permission repair, deleted browser caches and temp files, restarted with shift (directory rebuild) and my system is now significantly faster, I didn't realize how much it'd slowed down over the last month. Now to do full system opt

[leperkuhn]

"Press Shift during startup" = start up in Safe Boot mode and temporarily disable login items and non-essential kernel extension files (Mac OS X 10.2 and later)

[motionMan]

Originally Posted by leperkuhn

"Press Shift during startup" = start up in Safe Boot mode and temporarily disable login items and non-essential kernel extension files (Mac OS X 10.2 and later)

Indeed, but the important part is that it rebuilds the directory structure before it starts up. Obviously you wouldn't want to USE your computer in Safe Boot mode.

[leperkuhn]

Originally Posted by motionMan

Indeed, but the important part is that it rebuilds the directory structure before it starts up. Obviously you wouldn't want to USE your computer in Safe Boot mode.

interesting. I'm curious as to what the directory rebuild actually does..

[osxrules]

Is it really any wonder that windows (with weak gui effects anyway) would be faster on a P4 than OS X on a mac mini (which is really ~2 year old hardware)?

No but it is a wonder how Windows running on a Pentium 2 is more responsive. The point is not about the strength of any GUI effects. Fancy effects don't get work done.

Indeed, but the important part is that it rebuilds the directory structure before it starts up.

You should probably tell Alsoft that the directory rebuild feature in their Diskwarrior program is unnecessary. I suppose the same directory rebuild feature of the fsck software is also unnecessary.

Or, I wonder if maybe the FCP guy forgot to mention a couple of steps. Here's a document from some Final Cut Pro guy. Check the bottom of page 1:

http://www.bosfcpug.org/beta/index2....do_pdf=1&id=93

In place of repair permissions, maybe put repair disk or run fsck.

I'm pretty sure if shift boot was a directory rebuilder then Apple might have mentioned it as a troubleshooting measure.

Maybe there is some confusion with the old OS 9 desktop rebuild but the OS X equivalent to that is to rebuild the launchservices database (not done by shift boot). Even so, that's not a performance enhancer.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by motionMan

Indeed, but the important part is that it rebuilds the directory structure before it starts up.

No it doesn't.

[ghporter]

It's not valid to compare a Windows machine's web rendering speed with a Mac's speed. Microsoft built the rendering engine into the OS-does everyone remember the big fuss made because IE was "embedded" in Windows? That means that there are effectively some optimizations in browsing with IE on a Windows machine that aren't possible on a Mac.

I have noticed a small difference in rendering speed between the AthlonXP 2400+ desktop I often use and my wife's 800Mhz iBook G4, even when I'm running Firefox on both of them. In most cases it seems that speed differences are more due to network traffic speed than anything else.

[chris v]

Originally Posted by osxrules

...the OS X equivalent to that is to rebuild the launchservices database...

Only slightly off topic, but how does one do that, in particular? Cocktail, or similar program?

[motionMan]

Originally Posted by osxrules

Or, I wonder if maybe the FCP guy forgot to mention a couple of steps. Here's a document from some Final Cut Pro guy. Check the bottom of page 1:

http://www.bosfcpug.org/beta/index2....do_pdf=1&id=93

In place of repair permissions, maybe put repair disk or run fsck.

I'm pretty sure if shift boot was a directory rebuilder then Apple might have mentioned it as a troubleshooting measure.

The first page and a half of that document says pretty much what I was saying, except that it ALSO rebuilds, again according to my info.

Originally Posted by analogika

No it doesn't.

Guess we'll just have to agree to disagree; I trust my source.

My post wasn't meant to start a debate, try the info, if it works, great, if not don't use it. I have ways to gauge the performance of my system and I notice a difference in both startup, shut down, and general use (apps loading, menu usage, etc)

[osxrules]

motionMan, maybe shift boot does do some possibly performance enhancing activities like removing/rebuilding caches but I can assure you rebuilding the directory is not one of them. Look at the ad for Diswarrior:

http://www.applelinks.com/reviews/diskwarrior-x.shtml

Rebuilding the directory structure is all that diskwarrior does and it is a very critical process because the directory is basically what lets your hard drive work properly. If the rebuild gets screwed, you can lose your entire hard drive contents. There is absolutely no way in hell Apple would do that during a shift boot.

But I agree with what you said, if it is making a difference then by all means do it.

Originally Posted by chris_v

...the OS X equivalent to that is to rebuild the launchservices database...

Only slightly off topic, but how does one do that, in particular? Cocktail, or similar program?

Cocktail has a feature to rebuild the launchservices database. I'm not sure how well it works though. I also don't trust 3rd party programs like that much after using a supposed system optimizer, which changed permissions on my library cache folders, slowing my system to a crawl. I'd recommend you use Clix instead in general.

In this particular case, just go into /Library/caches and delete the items with launchservices in them - they end with .csstore.

Or, if you delete your caches then that will do this too. Use CLIX to do that and use the clean all caches command. This just does the following:

sudo rm /Library/Caches/*;sudo rm /System/Library/Caches/*;sudo rm ~/Library/Caches/*

Or, you can do update the database explicitly using the Launchservices framework. Just type the following:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -f -domain local -domain system -domain user

Reboot after you do any of those.